I always love it when writers go to the effort of showing that a criminal can change their life around. It's a good moral message, it's nice to see some positivity, rather than hearing the nihilistic "killing is the only way!!!!111" nonsense for the gajillionth time.

And it certainly helps that this art is positively gorgeous. It looks similar to the art in Court of Owls, actually.

That's probably intentional since a great many things here are precise callbacks to the Court arc with the big breakout at Arkham, the labyrinth and of course the magnet gang. It's a pretty great ending to the run no doubt, especially if you recently re-read Court like I did.

Seriously though, this seems insulting. Attaching someone's face to a moving train is a good way to break their neck, or inflict a whole range of injuries up to and including death. This is like someone saying, 'oh man, you threw me off a building, that really motivated me to turn my life around.'

The mask gang in question was described as one of the most brutal in Gotham in the conflict Batman has with them during the Owls arc. Forcing their potentially most useful future members to wear these horrendous masks and arming them with messed up melee weaponry to horribly mutilate whoever they got sent to attack.

The guys logic is a bit messed up but I can see why he'd go there. He was essentially a pretty bad human being who deserved to die and Batman didn't do that even if he was 100% justified in going there.

Besides, it's not like Batman himself ever tries to pass it off as some intentional accomplishment of his. He remains mostly silent throughout the guys monologue and is just like ".... Cool story bro. Glad things worked out for you!".

It's not as if Batman was going to kill them, and then showed mercy. He didn't even have a way to kill all of them. The whole gang was attacking him, so he magnetized a passing train. It was entirely a move of convenience on Batman's part. And again, attaching someone's face to a moving train is lethal force. I don't even understand how that dude survived without at least severe physical disabilities.

It's dumb as hell. It's even more insulting that this guy starts talking on his own volition about how great Batman is for attaching his face to a train.

I think his whole point of Batman killing them comes from the fact he so easily dealt with them and could've easily killed them all if he so chose oo but didn't. This guy's been in Gotham for a few years at this point in the story, likely keeping track of Batman and seeing that this guy is something else if he still refuses to kill people who totally deserve it, like this guy thinks he does for his work in the Ukraine mob.

Is he misinterpreting what Batman's intention was? Yeah he is, but what's Batman supposed to do? Tell him all he wanted was to beat the shit out of him and that everything he's accomplished is based on his interpretation of events and not what actually happened? Once again, Batman never acted then or now like it was anything more than a street fight that he dealt with, he just tells the guy to stay in school and go home.

As for physical injuries well I for one don't really give a damn about that stuff in comics. Especially in DC where Batman's been routinely annihilated in every single arc of Snyder's and a few more in the rest of the N52, not even counting post-Crisis. No amount of training and kung fu bullshit changes the fact Batman is just a human who'd drop dead from a bullet to the brain same as any other guy. So if the universe magically bends over for his regular ass to survive lethal stuff constantly, I don't think it's too implausible to think this kind of resilience to injury or death is just a standard factor when it comes to comic book regular people.

It's absurd that he would have that interpretation to begin with. Everyone knows that Batman doesn't kill. It's like thanking a police officer for shooting me, instead of throwing a grenade at me. Why would a police officer throw a grenade at me to begin with??

And again, it was easier for Batman to magnetize the train, than it would have been to start killing them all. This is not an example of Batman showing mercy. It's Batman doing what was more convenient to him. If they were fighting on a roof, and Batman blew up the roof and made them all fall off, are they all going to thank him for showing mercy to them because they didn't die??

This is insulting because Batman routinely tortures people, maims people. But we accept that this is fine because Batman doesn't kill. He is hyper-militarized, frequently uses excessive force. But we're supposed to think that he's a good guy because he doesn't kill people, even though he's using lethal force. This isn't someone knocking a dude out, or sending him flying during a fight. The guy outright says what Batman did to him: he attached his face to a moving train. In what goddamn universe is that not crazy excessive and brutal?

It is excessive and brutal but if we're really going into this direction with the conversation, then we're going to come to a logical end point of: superheroes are all fucked up. Batman is an insane fascist who in most incarnations cares more about feeding is obsession than really helping anyone.

Superman's very existence makes the very concept of human drive to improve themselves pointless because you will never, ever, EVER be even one, one hundredth as good as him in anything ever. Wanna feed the homeless shelter? Superman can do it better, faster and in a grander scope than you. Want to become a doctor? Superman can read a bunch of books in a matter of seconds and become a better doctor than you'll ever be. Hell, want to be the biggest, most vile bastard to walk the Earth?! Superman would still beat you in that if he ever went bad!

Spider-Man wouldn't be Spider-Man if he actually ever lived up to his mistakes. The various super geniuses in Marvel constantly create tech that would vastly improve society and they use it to backstab and murder one another in the latest "Who can out asshole Tony Stark competition".

These are hard truths that you can acknowledge but also put in the back of your mind when reading comics if you can't well then there's no point in reading them except to see how far things will go.

Most of the time I don't give a shit about Batman's brutality, and just enjoy him punching people. But this is a dude thanking Batman for attaching his face to a train. When the writer calls attention to it, and then tries to frame it as a good thing, that is straight up bullshit.

It's like writing a scene where someone goes up to Superman and says, "gee, thanks for doing everything better than I ever could", and then acting like that shows Superman in a good light. It's like writing a scene where someone goes up to Tony Stark and says, "gee, thanks a lot for never sharing your technology with us, I really appreciate it" and not being sarcastic about it.

Batman didn't kill or cripple that dude when he could have. The fact that Batman givens most people that measure of grace doesn't take away from how amazing it is.

People admiring Superman for not being an asshole or a showboat. For being a living example of what humanity could be if we put our fear, hurt, and insecurities behind us is a deeply hopeful message to me.

Arguably Tony Stark's greatest moral accomplishment is that he doesn't just sell the horrible nightmares in his head to the government, make more money than Odin, and buy himself a nice section of the multiverse somewhere. If anything his struggle to weigh the benefits of his technology against his natural selfishness and need for public praise is even more potent in today's world of 3D printers, at home gene editing, hobyshop drones, and the massive push for AI.

He attached that dudes face to a moving train. That is a crippling/killing move. And as I've said repeatedly, he was fighting a whole gang and could not really kill/cripple them all individually, magnetizing the train was the most convenient thing for him to do. It wasn't a deliberate act of mercy.

You would never write a scene where a guy thanks Superman for making him feel empowered by being better than him in every way, because that makes no sense and is dumb. It makes no sense for a guy to thank Batman for showing mercy to him by attaching his face to a goddamn moving train.

IMHO, Batman doesn't come out any worse than Spider-Man using his webs to restrict criminals and render them harmless (the magnet also took care of the axes and knives the Sixth were carrying). They're stuck directly against the surface -and- above the rails, as well, as one of Capullo's panels on the second page illustrates.

What I do see is a smart takedown that is shown to be relatively harmless, or at least isn't shown to be grim and gritty for the sake of... grim and gritty, but of course that's me.

Also, I don't think Superman being an idealist himself, one who serves as a symbol of good and as a beacon of hope to look at is -dumb-. There are better and subtler and more moving ways to show it, perhaps (I'm always reminded of "that" scene in All-Star Superman), but if anything else, DC's been having a spotty record exactly with this recently.

They're attached to a moving train! By their heads! Spider-Man webs people to stationary walls, with webs that support their whole body weight. If Spider-Man just webbed just a dude's head to a wall, and the dude's feet were dangling above the ground, I would say, oh shit he's gonna break that guy's neck! Much less attaching him to a moving train!!

Seriously, this is not just 'agree to disagree'. I do not understand how someone hears the words "You attached my face to a moving train" and goes, oh, that seems relatively harmless.

And I am not talking about Superman being an idealist. I am talking about a minor character going up to Superman and saying, "Gee, you do absolutely everything better than I could every hope to, that really makes me feel empowered." Because that is the equivalent of this thug going up to Batman and saying, "Gee, thanks for attaching my face to a moving train, you really showed mercy on me."

Goku's actually the most annoying example of what I'm talking about. The author who made him blatantly calls him a selfish prick who cares more about fighting than anything else and purposefully designed him to act and think like that. Just going by the manga, Goku is a totally reprehensible ass hole who's family would hate him and everyone would do their best to keep whatever plan he has from coming to fruition.

Why's he so annoying then? Well, the various adaptations of the manga try to portray him as someone who's nobler than he actually is with the 90s dub giving him god damn Superman-esque speeches. Creating this public perception the DBZ fanboys love to enforce (while simultaneously shitting on Superman when Dub Goku essentially acts like Superman) that Goku is some noble hero.

At least with superheroes, you can look at them from two different angles, one very positive and one very negative as I stated above. Because there are story-lines that portray them in different lights to show how they can be both good and bad things. Goku? Goku's unquestionably a selfish prick who gets his family, friends and entire planet killed multiple times and blatantly gets away with it simply because everyone else is equally stupid and selfish in that universe.

Except Goku does it even before they've got a million ass-pulls to get them out of danger. He lets Piccolo go so he can fight him again since Piccolo is the only one left at that point who can provide for him a decent challenge. Then there's Vegeta who, along with Nappa, just up and murderers almost all of Goku's friends, Goku himself and Goku's son along with the entire planet. When Krillin has Vegeta where he wants him and is justified in wanting revenge, what is Goku's reasoning for letting him live?

"Bbbbbuuuutttt Krillin! I wanna fight him again! I wanna! I wanna I wanna I wanna!" And then Krillin agrees to do it.

He's a selfish asshole, the author calls him as such several times and purposefully designed him to be like that. It's the fanboys who like to portray him as nobler than he really is because Goku is (apparently) the best ficitonal character ever and based on the 90s dub.

I know some people on here have problems with it, but the Snyder/Capullo run has really touched me. Like, every issue has made me so damn happy. Snyder writes the stories that I feel I would write if I could, the stories I write in my head when I daydream, and Capullo's art is so goddamned amazing.

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